Some matter disclosed herein is disclosed and claimed in commonly owned copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/899,007 filed contemporaneously herewith.
1. Technical Field
This invention relates to auditing events and conditions relating to the operation of elevator car doors and landing doors to provide maintenance messages indicative of maintenance action which is recommended to be taken, and maintaining the elevator in response to the maintenance messages.
2. Background Art
Elevator service known to the art depends primarily on periodic inspections and periodic performance of preventive actions, such as rebuilding subsystems, changing parts that are known to wear out, and the like. However, the periods of time between such inspections and preventive actions is based on average elevator environment, average elevator usage and average elevator maintenance. Therefore, the selected time period bears little relevance to the actual conditions of any particular elevator. In addition, periodic inspections rarely detect existing or impending problems. Periodic preventive actions are wasteful when unnecessary.
Prior elevator maintenance and repair has heretofore been based on very little information, depending instead on the intuition of service personnel which in turn depends substantially on the experience level of the service personnel. Service personnel must first determine the likely source of a problem and then make a subjective decision about what, if any, action is to be taken.
In the prior art, there is little if any assistance in detecting intermittent problems. When a problem has occurred but the elevator is running on arrival of the service personnel, the problem will not then be apparent to the service personnel. Maintenance recommendation messages provided by prior art maintenance systems have typically been very general, such as xe2x80x9cproblem closing doorxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cproblem opening doorxe2x80x9d.
Objects of the invention include: providing elevator door service and maintenance based upon factual information, including both performance and failure information, relative to the landing and car doors of a specific elevator; reducing reliance on periodic inspection and periodic preventive action for elevator door-related maintenance; providing necessary elevator door-related maintenance while reducing unnecessary maintenance activities; eliminating reliance on subjective intuition of service personnel in maintaining and servicing elevator doors; reducing reliance on experience of service personnel in maintaining and servicing elevator doors; finding the origin of elevator door problems quickly; restoring elevator service faster after having door problems; detecting the cause of intermittent elevator door problems; providing information allowing the identification of obscure elevator door problems; and permitting corrective action to be taken even when the elevator is running on arrival of service personnel.
According to the present invention, performance and failure information relative to the landing and car doors of an elevator is extracted, stored and analyzed to provide sets of recommended maintenance actions and problem resolution service actions.
(A) According to the present invention, operating speeds, operating times, positions, events, discrete conditions, durations, and numbers of occurrences are monitored and stored, and the information is logically combined, accumulated, averaged compared against specific corresponding threshold values, and so forth, to determine when notable events have occurred and to identify the nature thereof, which then determines maintenance messages identifying recommended maintenance and/or service actions which should be taken.
(B) The invention includes performance of a maintenance operation on the elevator system in response to any such maintenance messages, which include:
(C) adjusting the position of the car door vane;
(D) adjusting the position of the landing door lock at a given floor;
(E) adjusting or cleaning the landing door lock at a given floor;
(F)-(L) adjusting the car door closed switch;
(M) adjusting or cleaning the car door track or the car door sill;
(N) adjusting or cleaning the landing door track or landing door sill at a given landing;
(O)-(Q) adjusting a flexible traction loop (the door drive belt);
(R)-(CC) adjusting the elevator car door motor or the related door controller mechanism;
(DD)-(FF) adjusting or replacing the door position encoder;
(GG)-(KK) adjusting or replacing the between-door safety device;
(LL)-(RR) adjusting or replacing door open and/or close buttons, and landing call and car call buttons;
(SS)-(VV) replacing landing call button lights and car call button lights;
(XX) adjusting or replacing the car rail guides; and
(YY) adjusting the side-to-side clearance of the car guide rails at a given landing.
The invention provides an electronic elevator door-related maintenance record that shows the level of maintenance quality. The invention enables establishing relevant elevator door-related maintenance programs based on actual conditions of each elevator.
Other objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become more apparent in the light of the following detailed description of exemplary embodiments thereof, as illustrated in the accompanying drawing.